What happens to my suggestions?
Posted: Tue Mar 01, 2011 4:37 pm
A few people have asked whether we actually do anything with the suggestions made in here, so I thought I'd post this to tell you what usually happens.
First, I say no. Then I stop and think about it a bit before saying no again. Then I think about it properly and consider whether or not the suggestion has any merit at all, either now or in the future, and if it's something we can do anything about immediately. If I can, I do it and it's sorted.
If not, it falls into one of three categories:
1. Unusable suggestions. That stuff, I say no to again, this time finally.
2. Suggestions that need a lot more information from the person suggesting it (let's call that person the suggestor).
3. Suggestions that have enough information to work with but that will need to wait until later to be acted on.
In the latter two cases, I raise a request in our Bug/Feature tracking system (a product called Mantis) and link it back to the forum post, and will normally invite further feedback from the suggestor and others.
When the time is right, the dev team will go through all requests in Mantis and see what's in there that we have time to / are able to / are in the mood to do something about and get on with it in one way or another.
Unfortunately that can take a while, and here's why. There are four people in the Dev Team right now. Of those four, only one of us (me) is a programmer and actually has the ability to implement anything. As at the time of writing, there are exactly 53 open/active feature requests in the system for me to get to, over and above the things we need to do to get Beta implemented. Sure, some of those things will be covered off by the Beta implementation, but a lot of them are separate, standalone things that will just happen when they happen. They can't be farmed out to other people to do, and they will just sit there until I get to them.
At the end of the day, though, they will not be forgotten and, if enough people REALLY want something, it might just happen quickly. Basically, if you have a suggestion, think it through, post it well, get some support and see what happens.
First, I say no. Then I stop and think about it a bit before saying no again. Then I think about it properly and consider whether or not the suggestion has any merit at all, either now or in the future, and if it's something we can do anything about immediately. If I can, I do it and it's sorted.
If not, it falls into one of three categories:
1. Unusable suggestions. That stuff, I say no to again, this time finally.
2. Suggestions that need a lot more information from the person suggesting it (let's call that person the suggestor).
3. Suggestions that have enough information to work with but that will need to wait until later to be acted on.
In the latter two cases, I raise a request in our Bug/Feature tracking system (a product called Mantis) and link it back to the forum post, and will normally invite further feedback from the suggestor and others.
When the time is right, the dev team will go through all requests in Mantis and see what's in there that we have time to / are able to / are in the mood to do something about and get on with it in one way or another.
Unfortunately that can take a while, and here's why. There are four people in the Dev Team right now. Of those four, only one of us (me) is a programmer and actually has the ability to implement anything. As at the time of writing, there are exactly 53 open/active feature requests in the system for me to get to, over and above the things we need to do to get Beta implemented. Sure, some of those things will be covered off by the Beta implementation, but a lot of them are separate, standalone things that will just happen when they happen. They can't be farmed out to other people to do, and they will just sit there until I get to them.
At the end of the day, though, they will not be forgotten and, if enough people REALLY want something, it might just happen quickly. Basically, if you have a suggestion, think it through, post it well, get some support and see what happens.
